Reggae, Rum, and Revelation

Jamaica is 97% Christian. That's not a statistic — it's the air you breathe. Every street has a church. Every Sunday has a sermon. Every grandmother has a Bible verse for every occasion, and mine had several for occasions that hadn't happened yet.

I grew up Seventh-day Adventist in Kingston. Church all day Saturday, prayer meeting Wednesday, choir practice Friday. My mother pressed my dress so sharp it could cut sugarcane. My grandmother sang hymns while she cooked ackee and saltfish. God was in the house, literally and figuratively.

But I had questions. The Trinity confused me from childhood. Three in one? One in three? My Sunday school teacher said it was a mystery. I said mysteries are for novels. She didn't appreciate that.

I found Islam at university — UWI Mona campus. A Nigerian postgrad student named Fatimah wore hijab in the Caribbean heat like it was nothing. We became friends over shared lunches. She never preached. She just answered my questions without flinching.

I asked about Jesus. She said Muslims love Isa (AS) — he's one of the mightiest prophets. But he's not God. God doesn't need a son. God doesn't need anything. That sentence hit me like dominoes falling: if God doesn't need anything, then all worship is for our benefit, not His. The simplicity was devastating.

I read the Quran over the summer holiday. I read it in my grandmother's house in St. Ann while she cooked curry goat downstairs and had no idea her granddaughter was converting in the bedroom.

Taking my shahada was the easy part. Telling my family was the earthquake. My mother went silent for a month. My grandmother said, 'Nadine, you cyaan change your blood.' I told her I wasn't changing my blood. I was waking it up.

Being Muslim in Jamaica is lonely. There are maybe 5,000 of us in the whole country. One mosque in Kingston — on Regal Plaza Road, a small building that most Jamaicans walk past without noticing. Jumu'ah is forty people. But those forty people are the most diverse congregation I've ever been part of: Jamaican reverts, Indo-Caribbean families, Syrian merchants, African students, and a Chinese Jamaican brother named Winston who took shahada at sixty-two.

I still cook Jamaican food. I still listen to reggae — the clean stuff, the roots stuff, the Marley that's really about God if you listen closely. I still say 'wah gwaan' before I say 'assalamu alaikum.' I'm Jamaican. I'm Muslim. There's no conflict.

My grandmother hasn't forgiven me. But last Christmas — which I don't celebrate anymore — she sent me a plate of curry goat with a note: 'You still fi eat.' In Jamaican grandmother language, that's practically a peace treaty.

I'm waiting for her. The door is always open. Just like Allah's.